Legal

You have to have either a death wish or serious faith in a former wood pellet salesman from upstate New York to jump into Paul Ceglia's Facebook ownership case at this point.

As we've reported, exhaustively, Ceglia's claim to own half of Mark Zuckerberg's stake in the soon-to-be-public social media behemoth rests on a contested 2003 contract Zuckerberg signed when he worked on some software code for Ceglia as a Harvard undergraduate. Faced with the ruthless defense mounted by Facebook's lawyers at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, at least four firms - including DLA Piper -- have withdrawn from Ceglia's team. Ceglia himself has been hit with a $5,000 sanction for discovery failures and is on the hook for tens of thousands of dollars in Gibson, Dunn fees. Gibson, Dunn, moreover, has made it pretty clear that it's scrutinizing Ceglia's lawyers for representing the validity of a contract Facebook considers an outright fraud.

None of that has dissuaded Sanford Dumain, the chairman of Milberg. "We took a good hard look at all of the information available, including evidence in Mr. Ceglia's favor, and we believe he deserves to have his day in court," Dumain said in a statement. "We look forward to examining records from computers that Mr. Zuckerberg used when he was a freshman at Harvard and other records that will help answer questions about the ownership of Facebook. We hope that the court will rule that the time has come for that process to begin."

Through a Milberg spokesman, I sent Dumain questions about Gibson, Dunn's assertion that Ceglia's 2003 contract is a forgery and that the firm has located the original, which makes no mention of Facebook, in an email Ceglia allegedly sent from his parents' computer to Sidley Austin. Dumain declined to answer specific questions but said in an email response, "We look forward to a vigorous discovery process that will enable us to examine all of the relevant information available."

Dumain will be working with Dean Boland of Boland Legal, who came aboard for Ceglia in November. Boland has told us that the recent sanction order against Ceglia, which came out of expedited discovery against Ceglia, clears up issues from before he got into the litigation. He said that once Ceglia is permitted to obtain discovery from Zuckerberg, the case will look very different. Boland has also questioned why Facebook and Gibson Dunn have not moved to dismiss the case, which was supposed to be the goal of expedited discovery.

Dumain's statement raises the same question. "Defense counsel previously told the court and media that Facebook would move to dismiss this case, so we are pleased that the judge has scheduled a conference to address the deadlines for the commencement and completion of discovery," Dumain's statement said. "It should be up to a jury to weigh the contradictory claims, including evidence that supports Mr. Ceglia's case, such as his e-mail correspondence with Mr. Zuckerberg and experts' testimony about the authenticity of the contract."

Boland told me Monday that Milberg thoroughly vetted the evidence before signing on with Ceglia. "They saw the lack of any experts on Facebook's side who contradict our experts who have found the contract to be authentic," he said. "As soon as Milberg determined that, they said they were going to join us and bring all their resources to bear."

Orin Snyder of Gibson, Dunn declined to comment.

(Reporting by Alison Frankel)